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Alex Jones, Ben Shapiro, David Hogg, Donald Trump Jr, Erick Erickson, Fox News, Gateway Pundit, Jack Kingston, Jonah Goldberg, Lou Dobbs, Marc Thiessen, National Review, National Rifle Association, New York Times, Parkland, Robert Tracinski, Rush Limbaugh, Washington Post
Today in America and across the globe, the March for Our Lives protests are taking place:
Tens of thousands of people, outraged by a recent massacre at a South Florida school and energized by the students who survived, are spilling out in public protest in Washington and communities across the world on Saturday as they call for an end to gun violence.
The student activists, many of them sharp-tongued and defiant in the face of politicians and gun lobbyists, have kept attention on the issue in a time of renewed political activism on the left, as they helped lead a national school walkout and pushed state officials in Floridato enact gun legislation. The effectiveness of the students’ efforts will be measured, in part, on the success of Saturday’s events — their most ambitious show of force yet.
In the wake of the Parkland shooting, students started speaking out, and they weren’t kind about it, either. A few of those students, like David Hogg, became the unofficial spokespeople for this movement of young people calling for gun control. Unsurprisingly, those on the right have decided they love their guns so much that the best course of action would be to attack the survivors of school shootings.
From Donald Trump, Jr:
On Tuesday, the president’s son Donald J. Trump Jr. liked a pair of tweets that accused David Hogg, a 17-year-old who is among the most outspoken of the Parkland students, of criticizing the Trump administration in an effort to protect his father, whom Mr. Hogg has described as a retired F.B.I. agent.
From the same article, Gateway Pundit, Alex Jones, and Rush Limbaugh:
Gateway Pundit has argued that Mr. Hogg had been coached on what to say during his interviews. The notion that Mr. Hogg is merely protecting his father dovetails with a broader right-wing trope, that liberal forces in the F.B.I. are trying to undermine President Trump and his pro-Second Amendment supporters.
Others offered more sweeping condemnations. Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist behind the site Infowars, suggested that the mass shooting was a “false flag” orchestrated by anti-gun groups. Mr. Limbaugh, on his radio program, said of the student activists on Monday: “Everything they’re doing is right out of the Democrat Party’s various playbooks. It has the same enemies: the N.R.A. and guns.”
From Republican congressmen:
On CNN, former congressman Jack Kingston warned that Stoneman Douglas’ teens could be a front for liberal groups funded, naturally, by George Soros. “Their sorrow can very easily be hijacked by left-wing groups who have an agenda,” he said. “Do we really think 17-year-olds on their own are going to plan a nationwide rally?”
From Ben Shapiro at National Review:
What, pray tell, did these students do to earn their claim to expertise? They were present during a mass shooting, and they have the right point of view, according to the Left.
From Jonah Goldberg, also at National Review:
From Erick Erickson:
https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/968221925204996097
From Robert Tracinski at The Federalist:
DOM GIORDANO: That’s what the march is gonna be about tomorrow, Lou. As you know, I’m an educator, and I see these kids, the Parkland kids, a couple of them are out of control.
LOU DOBBS (HOST): Isn’t that disgusting? I mean, we’re tuning in to high school assemblies, to get the aggregated wisdom of 18 year olds. I mean, this is really —
GINA LOUDON: Who by their own words, Lou, say that they shouldn’t be able to own guns even though they can go to war but they think that they should be able to make laws. None of this makes any sense at all. And the very fact that we are giving such gravitas to people who just — they haven’t had enough life experience, yet, Lou, to be experts on much of anything yet. And I don’t think — it’s not insulting them to say that.
[…]
GIORDANO: I have to say too, Lou, as an educator, there’s a couple of these kids that are just rude in the way that they proceed here, as if they are bulletproof, so to speak. But the media is almost laundering their own opinions through these kids.
And then there are those who want to say that it’s actually the right who are the victims here, not the students. Like Marc Thiessen at the Washington Post:
I’m not even going to show you what’s been showing up in places like Breitbart. And in case you hadn’t guessed, the comments sections at Breitbart and Fox and the like are their usual cesspools. The supposedly “respectable” conservatives can’t help but take pot shots at these students, even if they’re doing so in a way that makes it look as though the eternal bogeyman “The Left” is taking advantage of them. But a lot of right-wing pundits are pulling their hair out, insane with anger that they’re getting attention in the national spotlight and that the media won’t see that it’s the right who are the real victims here.
That’s why I won’t be surprised when some right-wing idiot—be it a sitting or former congressperson, pundit or guest, op-ed columnist, or radio host—says he wishes it were today’s protesters who had been shot instead. Today’s protests promise to be huge, and there will be someone on the right who will be so furious and so desperate to try and level the playing field that he’ll say something really outrageous. He’ll apologize, probably, but the message will be out there, and it will be one lots of Republicans agree with. That’s how bad things are.